• Korean Journal of Adult Nursing
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.353-364
• /
• 2007

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of health promotion program on physiological stress, perceived stress and menopausal symptoms in menopausal women. Methods: This study followed a nonequivalent control group pretest-post test design. The subjects consisted of 57 middle-aged women(30 in the experimental group and 27 in the control group) who were recruited from the community health center in J city. The subjects in the experimental group participated in a health promotion program for 8 weeks, which was composed of yoga and teaching for 1 session per week. Results: The health promotion program showed a statistical difference in blood pressure, pulse rate and perceived stress. However, there was not a statistical difference in serum cortisol, or menopausal symptoms. Conclusion: This health promotion program was partially effective for reducing stress and it was not effective for reducing menopausal symptoms in menopausal women. It is necessary to conduct a future study using a different time period, measurement time, and target population.

• Korean Journal of Medicinal Crop Science
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.181-187
• /
• 2018

Background: This study aimed to investigate out the influence of drought stress on the physiological responses of Dendropanax morbifera seedlings. Methods and Results: Drought stress was induced by discontinuing water supply for 30 days. Under drought stress, photosynthetic activity was significantly reduced with decreasing soil water content (SWC), as revealed by the parameters such as Fv/Fm, maximum photosynthetic rate ($P_{N\;max}$), stomatal conductance ($g_s$), stomatal transpiration rate (E), and intercellular $CO_2$ concentration (Ci). However, water use efficiency (WUE) was increased by 2.5 times because of the decrease in $g_s$ to reduce transpiration. Particularly, E and $g_s$ were remarkably decreased when water was withheld for 21 days at 6.2% of SWC. Dendropanax morbifera leaves showed osmotic adjustment of -0.30 MPa at full turgor and -0.13 MPa at zero turgor. In contrast, the maximum bulk modulus of elasticity ($E_{max}$) did not change significantly. Thus, Dendropanax morbifera seedlings could tolerate drought stress via osmotic adjustment. Conclusions: Drought avoidance mechanisms of D. morbifera involve reduction in water loss from plants, through the control of stomatal transpiration, and reduction in cellular osmotic potential. Notably photosynthetic activity was remarkably reduced, to approximately 6% of the SWC.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
• /
• v.25 no.5
• /
• pp.876-880
• /
• 2011

Gammakdaejo-Tang (GMT) is a traditional oriental medicinal formula, a mixture of 3 crude drugs, and it has been clinically used for treating mild depressive disorders. The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of Gammakdaejo-Tang (GMT) on repeated stress-induced alterations of learning and memory on a passive avoidance test (PAT) test and also the anxiety-related behavior on the elevated pulse maze (EPM) in ovariectomized female rats. We assessed the changes in the reactivity of the cholinergic system by measuring the immunoreactive neurons of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) in the hippocampus after behavioral testing. The rats were exposed to the immobilization (IMO) stress for 14 days (2hours/day), and Gammakdaejo-Tang (400 mg/kg, p.o.) was administered 30 min before IMO stress. Treatments with GMT caused significant reversals of the stress-induced deficits in learning and memory on a working memory test, and it also produced an anxiolytic-like effect on the EPM, and increased the ChAT reactivities (p<0.001, respectively). These results suggest that Gammakdaejo-Tang might prove to be an effective antidepressant agent.

• Plant Biotechnology Reports
• /
• v.4 no.3
• /
• pp.179-183
• /
• 2010

Ethylene is a key gaseous hormone that controls various physiological processes in plants including growth, senescence, fruit ripening, and responses to abiotic and biotic stresses. In spite of some of these positive effects, the gas usually inhibits plant growth. While chemical fertilizers help plants grow better by providing soil-limited nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphate, overusage often results in growth inhibition by soil contamination and subsequent stress responses in plants. Therefore, controlling ethylene production in plants becomes one of the attractive challenges to increase crop yields. Some soil bacteria among plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPRs) can stimulate plant growth even under stressful conditions by reducing ethylene levels in plants, hence the term "stress controllers" for these bacteria. Thus, manipulation of relevant genes or gene products might not only help clear polluted soil of contaminants but contribute to elevating the crop productivity. In this article, the beneficial soil bacteria and the mechanisms of reduced ethylene production in plants by stress controllers are discussed.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.213-218
• /
• 2012

Abnormal dissolved oxygen concentration in aquatic habitat, both depletion and supersaturation, can be stress factor to aquatic animals. In this study the nationwide distribution of oxygen supersaturation was analyzed for three categories of streams (43 urban streams, 15 rural streams, and 14 forest streams) by using monitoring network data of the Korean Ministry of Environment. From the distribution analysis 30% of urban streams showed hyperoxic condition of eutrophic level, while no forest stream showed hyperoxic condition. The physiological effect of hyperoxia on fish was examined using two species of fish Zacco koreanus, which resulted in higher concentration of a stress hormone (cortisol) in fish exposed to hyperoxic concentration (196%) of oxygen. This study shows that hyperoxic condition is ubiquitous in urban and rural Korean streams, and it can be a stress factor to aquatic animals.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
• /
• v.26 no.4
• /
• pp.566-571
• /
• 2012

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of herbs aroma on relaxation in highly stressed volunteers with heart rate variability(HRV) and SACL(stress arousal check list). 28 highly stressed volunteers participated in this study. The volunteers were examined with heart rate variability(HRV) and SACL(stress arousal check list) before and after smell herbs aroma. After smelling powder incense composed with oriental medicine herbs, mean RR, SDNN, LF, HF, TP were incresed and mean HRV, LF/HF ratio were decreased, but it was not significant. And VLF, norm HF were incresed and norm LF was decreased significantly. This results show that the powder incense composed with oriental medicine herbs effects on decresing sympathetic nervous activity and increasing parasympathetic activity and rebalancing autonomic nervous system who were under stress.

• Plant Biotechnology Reports
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.243-251
• /
• 2010

Nitric oxide (NO) has been shown to be involved in diverse physiological processes in microbes, animals and plants. In this study, the involvement of NO in the development and possible roles in oxidative stress protection of Chinese cabbage (Brassica rapa subsp. pekinensis cv. Samrack-ulgari) seedlings were investigated. Exogenous application of sodium nitroprusside (SNP) retarded root elongation, while increasing lateral root formation of Chinese cabbage. Plants showed no signs of external stress due to SNP application in true leaves. Cotyledons of 3-week-old Chinese cabbage plants were found to be highly sensitive to SNP application. Treated cotyledons displayed rapid tissue collapse and associated cell death. Although SNP application reduced root growth under normal growth conditions, it also enhanced methyl viologen (MV)-mediated oxidative stress tolerance. Analysis of SNP application to Chinese cabbage leaf disks, revealed SNP-induced tolerance against oxidative stresses by MV and $H_2O_2$, and evidence includes prevention of chlorophyll loss, superoxide anion (${O_2}^-$) accumulation and lipid peroxidation. This report supports a role for nitric oxide in modulating early seedling development, programmed cell death and stress tolerance in Chinese cabbage.

• Molecules and Cells
• /
• v.39 no.2
• /
• pp.163-168
• /
• 2016

Caffeine has both positive and negative effects on physiological functions in a dose-dependent manner. C. elegans has been used as an animal model to investigate the effects of caffeine on development. Caffeine treatment at a high dose (30 mM) showed detrimental effects and caused early larval arrest. We performed a comparative proteomic analysis to investigate the mode of action of high-dose caffeine treatment in C. elegans and found that the stress response proteins, heat shock protein (HSP)-4 (endoplasmic reticulum [ER] chaperone), HSP-6 (mitochondrial chaperone), and HSP-16 (cytosolic chaperone), were induced and their expression was regulated at the transcriptional level. These findings suggest that high-dose caffeine intake causes a strong stress response and activates all three stress-response pathways in the worms, including the ER-, mitochondrial-, and cytosolic pathways. RNA interference of each hsp gene or in triple combination retarded growth. In addition, caffeine treatment stimulated a food-avoidance behavior (aversion phenotype), which was enhanced by RNAi depletion of the hsp-4 gene. Therefore, up-regulation of hsp genes after caffeine treatment appeared to be the major responses to alleviate stress and protect against developmental arrest.

• Animal Bioscience
• /
• v.35 no.11
• /
• pp.1635-1648
• /
• 2022

Thermal stress due to extreme changes in the thermal environment is a critical issue in cattle production. Many previous findings have shown a decrease in feed intake, milk yield, growth rate, and reproductive efficiency of cattle when subjected to thermal stress. Therefore, selecting thermo-tolerant animals is the primary goal of the efficiency of breeding programs to reduce those adverse impacts. The recent advances in molecular genetics have provided significant breeding advantages that allow the identification of molecular markers in both beef and dairy cattle breeding, including marker-assisted selection (MAS) as a tool in selecting superior thermo-tolerant animals. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which can be detected by DNA sequencing, are desirable DNA markers for MAS due to their abundance in the genome's coding and non-coding regions. Many SNPs in some genes (e.g., HSP70, HSP90, HSF1, EIF2AK4, HSBP1, HSPB8, HSPB7, MYO1A, and ATP1A1) in various breeds of cattle have been analyzed to play key roles in many cellular activities during thermal stress and protecting cells against stress, making them potential candidate genes for molecular markers of thermotolerance. This review highlights the associations of SNPs within these genes with thermotolerance traits (e.g., blood biochemistry and physiological responses) and suggests their potential use as MAS in thermotolerant cattle breeding.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
• /
• v.30 no.6
• /
• pp.570-575
• /
• 2022

Stress breaks body balance, which can cause diverse physiological disorders and worsen preexisting diseases. However, recent studies have reported that controllable stress and overcoming from stress reinforce resilience to resist against more intense stress afterwards. In this study, we investigated the protective effect of corticosterone (CORT), a representative stress hormone against hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂)-induced neuronal cell death and its underlying molecular mechanism in SH-SY5Y cells, a human neuroblastoma cell line. The decreased cell viability by H₂O₂ was effectively restored by the pretreatment with low concentration of CORT (0.03 μM for 72 h) in the cells. H₂O₂-increased expression of apoptotic markers such as PUMA and Bim was decreased by CORT pretreatment. Furthermore, pretreatment of CORT attenuated H₂O₂-mediated oxidative damages by upregulation of antioxidant enzymes via activation of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2). These findings suggest that low concentration of CORT with eustressed condition enhances intracellular self-defense against H₂O₂-mediated oxidative cell death, suggesting a role of low concentration of CORT as one of key molecules for resilience and neuronal cell survival.